Gauravonomics Blog

Welcome to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my combined feed in a feed reader or by e-mail and you'll never miss a single post. Thanks for visiting!

 

 From Gapingvoid  

(Cross-posted at Desi Critics)

Every astrologer of every type I have ever consulted has told me that I’ll start a business of my own one day. It has always looked unlikely. One, I have no money at all, no money from my family, no money of my own; and while future earnings count, I have already counted it and spent it all. And, two, when I don’t even have the commitment to have a steady relationship, how likely am I to have the commitment to build a business?

I did consider it seriously once, in my IIM-B days, when I wrote a business plan for a transcription based ITES start-up. It was late 2001 and those things were mushrooming everywhere, medical transcription, legal transcription, and I don’t even remember what else. Riding on the ITES story, our plan also found some enthusiasm in business plan contests in India and our institute even sponsored us to participate in an international business plan contest at Hawaii! We stayed walking distance away from Waikiki beach and had a wonderful trip, but did not find favor with the VCs.

Since then, my nine-to-nine, at-least-five-days-a-week, never-a-dull-day job has left me with little time or inclination to think of starting something up myself.

However, ever since I have read the list of ‘the twelve best business start-up ideas for Americans outside the US‘ in the August issue of Business 2.0, I have thought of nothing else but start-ups. I have also, incidentally, broken my vow of never ever blogging about business.

First things first, the list is not meant to be the ultimate investors’ guide to start-up opportunities. It’s an anecdotal list, a collection of interesting start-up ideas from around the world, the focus squarely on the interesting part. The ideas range from the almost altruistic (become a social entrepreneur in South Africa) and the openly opportunistic (flip gold mining claims in Bolivia) to the truly creative (build cheap Wi-Fi networks for Brazilian resorts) and the brazenly bizarre (launch an exclusive online social network for Russian millionaires).

The list is also indicative of the new centres of gravity for business growth: two ideas each are in India and China and three each in Latin America and Africa. Most of the ideas require investments of less than $100k (which is still a lot of money!) and it is also indicative of something that two out of only four low and medium risk ideas are from India.

My favorite ideas are (1), (3), (8) and (12). (1) and (3) because they involve just the right mix of an eureka! brain-wave, technological know-how and plain old used car salesman type selling. (8) and (12) because they involve traveling on work to Greek vineyards (and drinking wine) and Libyan ruins (Leptis Magna would be worth it all itself).

I’m also partial to (2), (10) and (11), because they remind me of the six weeks I spent at Babrala in Uttar Pradesh, convincing some of the poorest farmers in India to grow vegetables, along with the usual grains, to increase the yield from their land.

(5) and (6) are interesting only because they involve Americans setting up shop in China and are not really inspiring otherwise.

My least favorite ideas are (4), (7) and (9 ). (4), because it presumes that Russian millionaires would want to spend their rest and recreation time online, and not in the real world. (7), because, in spite of its frontier aura of the wild west, it is exploitative at its core. (9), because I really believe that Indian vineyards will become big, and in a not-too-distant future!

The list, incidentally:

1) Mingle with tourists and well-to-do locals at Brazilian beach resorts and watch them log on to the web via your targeted wi-fi broadband service. (Investment level: <$100K. Risk Level: Medium.)

2) Buy soybeans from Argentine farmers, set up a micro-refinery to convert it into bio-diesel, and sell it back to the same farmers (who account for about 75 percent of the country’s diesel consumption), thus setting up a virtuous cycle. (Investment level: $100K-$500K. Risk Level: High.)

3) Tie up with the usually mom-and-pop content providers in India’s booming mobile industry, build a software that allocates space on cell-phone screens for ads, and sell that space to advertisers to help monetize all of those pageviews. (Investment level: $100K-$500K. Risk Level: Medium)

4) Build an online social networking community for Russia’s status-conscious nouveau riche millionaires, hire a handful of wealthy socialites to spread the word and rake in the moolah. (Investment level: $500K-$1 million. Risk level: High.)

5) Find a small, fast-growing Chinese city with a ready-to-experiment university population and open an American style restaurant with a menu that specializes in hard-to-get offerings: fresh coffee, bagels, and homemade ice cream. (Investment level: $100K. Risk level: High.)

6) Become an approved home designer or contractor for one of the large home improvement retail chain in China, hire an architect with Western expertise and a Chinese foreman who can source local labor and deal with the bureaucracy. Set up a service to remodel homes for China’s burgeoning middle class, who are yet to imbibe the American DIY spirit. (Investment level: $100K-$500k. Risk level: High.)

7 ) Hire a local Bolivian geologist to prospect for a plot of land that promises to have gold deposits, stake a claim on it with the Bolivian Ministry of Mines or buy the claims directly from the peasants who own them, then flip the property to a medium-size mining company. (Investment level: $100K-500K. Risk level: High.)
Travel through Peloponnese, the peninsula making up southern Greece, tasting wines at its 150-plus boutique wineries to find ones likely to appeal to US palates (and sommeliers). Then ask to become their exclusive U.S. representative. (Investment level: <$100K. Risk Level: Medium.)

9) Import fruity white wines from California and Australia to cater to the increasingly cosmopolitan tastes of the burgeoning middle class in India, the world’s fastest-growing market. (Investment level: <$100K. Risk level: Low.)

10) Tie up with coffee farmers in Rwanda, export the coffee beans to the US, process and package it, and sell the coffee to a retailer, or a coffee chain like Starbucks. (Investment level: <$100K. Risk level: High.)

11) Teach locals in an impoverished South African town to use their skills to make something marketable (like home-made cookies) and sell it to socially conscious clients. (Investment level: <$100K. Risk level: High.)

12) Travel to Libya’s dozens of archaeological sites and 1,100 miles of undeveloped beachfront, tie up with a reputable local partner to cut through the red tape, and invest in Libya’s brand new travel and hospitality industry. (Investment level: Any. Risk level: High.)

If I were to start up something today, I would buy out a vineyard in Nasik, hire an experienced team to make the best wine in the region, set up six hundred standalone wine bars across the country, offer vinyard tours on weekends and start drawing cartoons on the back of business cards.

Recommended Reading:

• No related posts.